Ukraine has asked the signatory states of the 1994 Budapest Memorandum (the United States, the United Kingdom and Russia) to conduct consultations, Ukraine's Foreign Minister Pavlo Klimkin said.
“We asked the signatories of the Budapest Memorandum about immediate consultations. Certainly, Russia does not want this,” Klimkin told a press conference held jointly with Norway’s Foreign Minister Borge Brende in Kyiv on Sept. 1.
At the same time, he said that Ukraine is willing to use all existing formats for talks aimed at preventing further hostilities and ensuring that “this response is not just visible but also productive.”
The Ukrainian minister said that according to the UN statute and international law, “all actions of Russia, every registered case of shelling of the Ukrainian territory, the appearance of every Russian soldier on the Ukrainian territory, are acts of aggression against Ukraine.”
The international community must respond appropriately to all these facts, Klimkin said.
The Budapest Memorandum signed by the United States, the UK, Russia and Ukraine in 1994, involved security guarantees being given to Ukraine in exchange for it giving up the nuclear weapons it inherited from the Soviet Union.
